twenty

The number feels refreshingly adult. I thought 20 would feel no different, but it does. It's good. I feel emotionally aged to about 24, but that's alright. I think my maturity and actual age will never match. It's the joke of my life.

I am immensely blessed to have friends and family who throw me parties, make me cupcakes and cakes, bring me Sheetz snacks at 1am, and give me selfless love. I am especially thankful today for my brother, who wrote me this song. Wow.

Last night, I did my Birthday Tradition, which if you're unfamiliar, is when I start reading my journals since my last birthday at the stroke of midnight, reading through the year of my life. Then I journal about how much God did in that year! This year was a doozy. Humility, heartbreak, vulnerability and learning how to completely let go of control. Biggies. God's faithfulness to me is obvious, tender and neverending. I am very filled by it today.

The second part of my tradition is to dump out the contents of my Hope Jar...a little jar with every giant dream and hope in my heart written on little slips of paper. God answered a few this year. What surprised me is that I wrote about 20 or 30 new ones last night. I didn't realize I had so many big dreams until I started writing them out. Dreams about jobs and faraway relationships and my last semester. Thinking about it now, listening to Joel Ansett and sipping coffee is filling me with the bittersweet-sentimental-desperation-joy that is the feeling that dominates my senior year.

Just like Nathan said in the song, God's blessings to me have only just begun. How obvious this is to me, on this birthday more than ever before! Walking back from an errand yesterday, I had parked my car in a gravel lot and as I walked with the stones crunching underneath me, I remembered the prayer time I led on my hall on Saturday. We talked about the hard times God had led us through as we held little pebbles I collected outside the door. We remembered God's gestures of His faithfulness, in-charge-ness, and love as we held those tiny, unbreakable stones. So I stopped walking and looked around me. Those same stones completely covered the entire parking lot. I was walking on a solid field of innumerable little stones. Countless moments of peace, presence, conviction, guidance, providing and joy.
Then God said: THIS IS MY LOVE FOR YOU.
This immensity of this love...all I can do is give everything of myself back. That's the only thing I have that will even form some kind of response to this, my stone-field life that God has given me.

Who knows who I will spend this day with next year? Well, I know I'll be drinking something strong and it won't be finals week. So I'm looking forward to that. But who knows if I'll be working for the CCO in Ohio or working at a shelter in Seattle or Portland or Denver, or walking up and down the High Line in the city while it snows? Who knows if I will be somewhere that feels like home, or somewhere that feels like a scary new place? Who knows if I will be with old or new friends? Who knows? It's exciting.

I know more is going to change this year than a lot of other years. I do know one thing for sure: all that ever matters is more of God. More of Him. More more more more. That's all I want, forever, and nothing else matters, not twenty, not well-put words, not As and Bs, not jobs, not boyfriends, not control, not anything at all.

Continue your love to those who know you, oh my gentle, beautiful God. (Ps. 36)
All I want is more.
More in twenty than nineteen.